


because we don't want to starve

by seadlings



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Post-The Raven King, a soft quiet thing, let adam parrish have some peace & quiet 2k17
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-08
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-22 19:44:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9622757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seadlings/pseuds/seadlings
Summary: Moments of peace for Adam Parrish are rare, precious things, black opals cradled in shaking hands. He is scared to disturb them, or really even think about them, because as soon as he realizes they’re happening, the world crowds back in on him. Worries about school and money and Gansey pick up their harsh, orderly, incessant dance again, and peace recedes like a cat that has offered you a moment of its attention, only to change its mind as soon as you try to pet it.





	

Moments of peace for Adam Parrish are rare, precious things, black opals cradled in shaking hands. He is scared to disturb them, or really even think about them, because as soon as he realizes they’re happening, the world crowds back in on him. Worries about school and money and Gansey pick up their orderly, incessant dance again, and peace recedes like a cat that has offered you a moment of its attention, only to change its mind as soon as you try to pet it.

April has turned Henrietta’s pollen-choked air into something sweet and magical. The rich scents of magnolias and honeysuckle weave themselves inescapably into one’s consciousness, and Adam thinks this—night falling, tender and soft outside his wide-thrown windows, sweet, floral scents brushing the edge of his senses—this must be what it’s like to walk the Cabeswater of Ronan’s mind. At least sometimes, when the forest is reacting to his lush, secretive sensuality instead of his tremors and fault lines.

He sighs out a breath of spring air, lungs light and easy on the inhale, sleepiness for once a comforting blanket around the edges of his thoughts instead of a dragging weight. He has no idea how long he’s been sitting here, bent over calculus homework at his makeshift desk, or how long it’s been since he dropped his pencil, propped his chin on his folded hands to watch the brightness of sunset drag into the dark blue of night. For once, he doesn’t care, doesn’t feel the urgent need to ration his minutes and seconds. He has hours and hours to finish his homework, none of it even due tomorrow—he’d finished all of that already—and the crickets are a dull, soothing white noise making dusk seem both precious and interminable.

It only makes sense that Ronan would show up. Ronan, who belongs so thoroughly to moments like these, the magic of him perfectly matching the magic of warm, encroaching night and the shroud of millions of stars hiding beyond the light pollution.

Adam barely has time to lift his head from his hands in the handful of seconds between Ronan’s knock and Ronan’s invitationless entering, but where he would usually feel the itch of irritation with this boy’s heedlessness, his lack of comprehension of boundaries that aren’t his own, he’s just quiet. Quiet as he watches Ronan kick the door shut with the heel of his boot. Quiet as Ronan flings himself onto Adam’s mattress like a marionette with its strings cut.

When Adam had first met Ronan Lynch, he had been abrasive, the worst kind of person, arrogant in every way possible. He was rich, he was thoughtless, he was lazy and loud, and more than everything else, he was unashamed to take up space in the world. He seemed to deliberately take up more than that naturally allotted to him, in fact, always sticking his legs out into the aisles between desks, setting his boots on unoccupied chairs, walking down the middle of hallways with a kind of pointed inattention. Adam, who had had lived his life till then assured that any space he took up was wasted, who was always pulling in elbows, hunching his shoulders, avoiding eye contact, hated this about Ronan Lynch.

Now, after time spent learning Ronan, after becoming skilled at navigating his sharp edges and light places, Adam kind of loves this about him. Loves how, in spite of everything that has tried to harden and shatter him, Ronan is still this careless-limbed boy. He lives in the world more vividly and wholly than almost any other person he has met, this aspect of him matched only by Gansey and Blue and, in all likelihood, the living version of Noah Czerny they will never get to meet.

Ronan’s fingers move in rhythm to whatever chaotic thing is living in his head right now, and Adam fixates on that for several long second before looking to his boyfriend’s face. His eyes are closed, lashes dark and feathery above his sharp cheekbones. Goddamn, how can one person be made of so many contradictions?

They haven’t spoken yet, but something about the timelessness of the evening disallows speech.

It’s not like words do them any good, anyway.

Ronan’s eyes open, catch Adam’s, and Adam’s moving to him isn’t voluntary so much as predetermined, effortless. He crawls onto the mattress, sits next to Ronan with his knee an inch from Ronan’s armpit. They look at each other, a sort of peaceable stand-off, each seeking to catalogue more about the other in the space between blinks than the last one, or the one before that. The patch of longer stubble near the hinge of his jaw Ronan had missed when shaving this morning, the cluster of new freckles clinging to the sheer cliffside of Ronan’s nose, the way his front teeth are a little flash of white between his slightly parted lips. An endless litany of details.

Adam could look at him all day. Which is funny, because he used to not be able to stand the sight of him.

Ronan’s mouth curls into a little smirk like he has somehow heard that thought, agrees that it’s funny. The crickets are getting louder, frogs joining in the chorus, and they’re both flooded by a concentrated waft of wisteria, so sweet they’re both loathe to breathe out again and lose the scent.

They exhale, almost in unison, and Ronan replaces the sweetness of the flowers with the tenderness of his hand pressed to Adam’s hip, fingertips brushing skin under the hem of his shirt.

They’re still getting used to this, to casual softness. Adam, especially, has had a hard time with it, had taken months to be able to just brush his fingers over Ronan’s cheek in passing.

When touch has intent, they’re fine. It’s natural for them to reach for each other in the depths of lust, pupils blown and hearts pounding even before their skins have made contact, and it's even more natural to elbow one another playfully at a joke. But this, gentleness, is a language they’re learning to speak together.

(Ronan, frustratingly, is better at it. But Adam's getting there.) 

Ronan’s hand brushes up a little, thumb finding the warm skin over Adam’s hipbone, stroking there. Adam smiles, small and sweet, and drops his own hand on Ronan’s chest, right over his heart.

Its beat is steady, if a little quick. It still amazes him, that he can raise Ronan’s pulse just by existing.

They sit like that, exchanging the warmth of each other’s presences and silences, and even though Adam was already feeling unusually and wonderfully still before Ronan showed up, he finds himself thinking back to standing by the window at the Barns, Gansey saying, “She makes me quiet.”

Love isn’t something he thought he’d get a chance to explore for years yet, if ever. And that had chafed in the rare moments he let himself think about it. It was, comparably, a small hurt. His other needs were so much bigger. His hungers for autonomy, respect, power, were all mountains of such scale that the ache of loneliness, the want for love and tenderness and touch were negligible. Speed bumps juxtaposed with the Himalayas.

Now that it’s here, though, has settled in his chest to warm him like hot coffee on a cold morning, he doesn’t know how he lived without it. He also doesn’t know how he missed its coming—because it was there before Ronan’s kiss really made him consider it, before he kissed Ronan back and thought _oh, that’s what that is_. It was there when Gansey winked at him while turning in a math test, there when Blue griped at them at Nino’s, sweet tea in hand. It was there when he overheard Noah asking Blue to get the chocolate gelato instead of mango this time, so someone would be tasting it for him. It was there when Chainsaw clipped his cheek with her wing after a short, rare stint perched on his shoulder, there when he caught Ronan’s snort at the way Adam swore at her claws cutting into his shoulder right before she took off.

Love. It’s not a concept he thought he would have put a feeling to by graduation. And yet, here he is, warm and quiet with it as he shifts to lay down next to Ronan, tangling their legs together.

Sometimes, he thinks, the world surprises you.

Sometimes, the surprises are even good ones.

They fall asleep like that, and when Adam’s bladder wakes him up at 3 am, his panic over all the unfinished work isn’t crushing. He just sighs, wakes Ronan up so he’ll get under the covers like a normal person, and goes back to work.

**Author's Note:**

> edit 6/6/17: lmao Whoops defo put chainsaw's name down wrong i don't rp a ronan knock-off char online Nope idk what ur talkin about


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